SIGACCESS Annual Report

SIGACCESS continues to grow in membership and expand its activities.  The SIG boasts members from 18 countries worldwide. Also continuing the pattern of growth, the ASSETS’06 conference attracted even more attendees than the previous high set by the 2005 conference.   SIGACCESS is also pleased to announce that the ACM has Publications Board has established a new journal, Transactions on Accessible Computing, which focuses on the interests of SIG members.

ASSETS Conference Updates
Typically, the highlight of our year is the ASSETS conference.  ASSEST’06, held in Portland, Oregon, was no exception.  It attracted a record number of attendees and paper submissions.   The move to an annual conference appears to have been highly successful and we look forward to ASSETS’07 in Tempe, Arizona, USA, October 15 – 17.

Two ACM Best Paper Awards were presented at ASSETS’06:
 

SIGACCESS Best Paper Award:  Rick Kjeldsen, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, “Improvements in vision-based pointer control”

SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award:  Anna Cavender, Richard E. Ladner, Eve A. Riskin, University of Washington, “MobileASL: Intelligibility of sign language video as constrained by mobile phone technology”

For the third year, the conference featured an NSF sponsored Doctoral Consortium (see http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/newsletter/sept06.php ).   This consortium allowed advanced doctoral students to present their dissertation topics and receive feedback during formative stages of their work.  Several students from the previous year’s Consortium returned to the conference and also participated in the event.

The conference also launched the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) event for SIGACCESS.  The SRC, sponsored by Microsoft Research, allows students from diverse ACM areas to present their work and get recognized for achievement.    The three winners of the ASSETS SRC were Joshua M. Hailpern (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Yevgen (Eugene) Borodin (State University of New York – Stony Brook), and Murni Mahmud (University of Manchester).  We are pleased to announce that across all ACM SIGs and conferences participating, Eugene Borodin was awarded first place in the Graduate Student Category for his paper “A flexible VXML interpreter for non-visual web access”.  Eugene was invited to the ACM Awards ceremony on June 9th and was officially recognized for his winning entry.  For more information, see http://www.acm.org/src/

Finally, a SIGACCESS Business Meeting was held at ASSETS.    Attendees were updated on SIG activities and discussed ideas for the future.  The annual Business Meeting is a great place to meet other SIGACCESS members and learn how to get involved in SIG activities.    Everyone is welcome to attend the Business Meeting at the upcoming ASSETS’07 conference.


Publications
Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) is now accepting submissions and is expected to have its first issue early 2008, see http://www.is.umbc.edu/taccess/index.html .  TACCESS is a quarterly journal that publishes refereed articles addressing issues of computing as it impacts the lives of people with disabilities.  It provides a technical forum for disseminating innovative research that covers either:
* applications of computing and information technologies to provide assistive systems to persons with disabilities, or
* investigations of computing technologies and their use by persons with disabilities.
A Special Issue of the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) on the topic of Web Accessibility is scheduled for the journal’s June, 2007 issue.

The SIGACCESS newsletter continues with its regular online publications with a new Editor-in-Chief, see http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/newsletter/.   We thank Simeon Keates for his artful editorship for issues spanning the last three years.   The job is an often demanding one that he accepted with grace, diligence, and professionalism.  While appreciating his service, we recognize his desire to move on.   SIGACCESS is extremely pleased that Sri Kurniawan of the University of Manchester has agreed to assume the position as Editor-in-Chief.  

Also available on the SIGACCESS website is the monthly ‘left field’ column (see http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/leftfield/ ).   This column, initiated by Simon Harper, brings up topics and issues related to accessibility that arise from ACM publications not part of the SIGACCESS publications.   As with the newsletter, the ‘left field’ column has undergone a change in editor.   Yeliz Yesilada of the University of Manchester assumed the writing of the column a few months ago.   We thank her for stepping up to this.   At the same time, we wish to thank Simon Harper for all his efforts in launching the successful column and keeping SIGACCESS members apprised of a wide range of ACM publications that gave our community new perspectives on our work.

Developing students
A key focus for SIGACCESS is developing new researchers.  The SIG has taken many steps to address this goal.   Among those activities are the following that were part of our 2007 initiatives:

The SIGACCESS website has a new repository of information about Ph.D. and Master’s theses related to assistive technologies, computer access, and the application of computing and information technology in solving relevant disability problems.   This information is available on the SIGACCESS website at http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/phd/index.php .  This site can be used not only to learn about this work (sometimes in advance of its publication), but also as a resource for locating universities and faculty active in the area.   Students wishing to publish their work can find an online submission form on the website.

SIGACCESS hosted an ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) event for the first time at ASSETS’06 (see above).

SIGACCESS is grateful to the National Science Foundation for again sponsoring the Doctoral Consortium at ASSETS’06 (see above).   The highly successful event will be continued at the upcoming ASSETS’07 conference.

SIGACESS participated in cooperation with the ITiCSE’07 conference.  This conference on Computer Science Education had a focus on inclusive education, see http://iticse2007.computing.dundee.ac.uk/ .


SIGACCESS Advisory Panel
The SIGACCESS By-Laws allow for the appointment of an Advisory Panel to work with the SIG’s elected officers, http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/mission.php .  This past year, a new panel was appointed, consisting of the following members:

    Clayton Lewis, USA
    Constantine Stephanidis, Greece
    Marilyn Tremaine, USA


Other Activities
SIGACCESS began some work on policy issues this year.  Clayton Lewis from the University of Colorado serves as Policy Coordinator for the SIG.

SIGACCESS continues to partner with National Alliance for Access to Computing Careers (AccessComputing)  for the purpose of increasing the representation of people with disabilities in a wide range of computing careers, including those in computer science, information systems, software development, computer engineering, systems management and maintenance, and teaching.  More information about AccessComputing can be found at http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/newsletter/june06/june06_01.php and http://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/

SIGACCESS provided financial support for the International Cross Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility 2007 (W4A) at the WWW Conference in Banff this past May (see http://www.w4a.info/2007/ ). The workshop had the theme ‘Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity?”

SIGACCESS participated in cooperation with the following two conferences:

The 12th Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE’07), with the theme of “Inclusive Education in Computer Science”.  http://iticse2007.computing.dundee.ac.uk/
     
i-CREATe07: International Conference for Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Technology,  Singapore http://www.i-create2007.org/